The Center for Technology & Society and the Link Centre at the University of Wits in South Africa have the honor to finally publish the presentation made by Mr. Charles Igwe, one of the most important movie producers in Nigeria. 

His presentation was made at the seminar “The Rise of People´s Cinema – A Emergência do Cinema Povo”. The seminar took place on May 11th, 2006, and was organized by the Center for Technology & Society (CTS) at the Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School in Brazil, in partnership with the Link Centre at the University of Wits in South Africa. It was part of the “Cultura Livre” project, which discusses the role played by intellectual property as an incentive for cultural production and development.

One of the elements arising from the project investigations is that intellectual property is beneficial for certain types of businesses, such as Hollywood, but not to others. Intellectual Property might not work as an incentive for other forms of cultural production, which are equally important in economic terms, let alone in terms of cultural importance, in the developing world.

The project is supported by the Ford Foundation. This and other presentations are available in video at the Cultura Livre website linked below. The transcription was made by Roberta Zaluski ( This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ).

This transcript is licensed under a Creative Commons lincense: Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike. See details below:

Websites and email:

www.culturalivre.org.br
www.direitorio.fgv.br/cts
link.wits.ac.za
www.openbusiness.cc
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Short Facts:

Number of Movies produced in 2005:

United States: 611
India: 934
Nigeria: >1200

Source: Cahiers du Cinema, Atlas du Cinéma, 2005
 

On February 23rd of 2006, the Society and Technology Center from Rio de Janeiro´s Law school of Getulio vargas Foundation (FGV) made it´s second intervention in OMPI´s history. The first time had occured in april, 2005, on the first meeting about the Development Agenda, yet as observer "ad hoc". Now  FGV made it´s first intervention as a permanent observer in OMPI.
See below the complete intervention.

See below the first session of  PROVISIONAL COMMITTEE ON PROPOSALS RELATED TO A WIPO DEVELOPMENT AGENDA (PCDA) took place in Geneva from February 20 to 24 of this year.

Besides this provisional, there is also an annex, in which is listed the items for discussion of all countries and groups which presented written proposals in OMPI. These items will base the discussion in the next reunion in June (26 to 30th).

It is important to say that the items listed by the 15 countries from the Group of Development weren’t included in the resume made available to those who were in Genebra. After February 24th, the last day of the first session of the PCDA, the countries delegations maintained informal consulting with OMPI in order to assure that all items, including the ones listed by the Group of Development, were made available in only one document.

In the beginning of January the press in Brazil was mobilized with the discussion of public funding to finance movie production in the country. The investment is huge: more than US$10 million. In the newspapers, the usual characters debated whether the movie industry should be regionalized or decentralized, or whether the money should be granted to beginners or veteran movie-makers. The most awkward element in the discussion is how much it ignores an important global aspect which is transforming audiovisual production: the use of digital technology and how the global peripheries are appropriating of this technology to produce, distribute and exhibit their own visual narratives.